W. S. C. Russell

“ Out of the austerity of the volcanic passes, into the quiet and serenity of the uncharred meadows, comes the rider, and the load of grandeur and sublimity is lifted that beauty and charm may soothe the mind after the contemplation of these natural creations that astonish and awe. This is the pleasure road of Icelandic youth and those gentlemen who wish to display the points of the latest saddle pony from the great horse fairs of the north. ”

“ The smoke rose from the peat fire in the kitchen, bringing with it the pleasing odor of burning humus, the farm maids were busy with the milking and the men were swinging their scythes in the meadow, albeit it was half past nine at night. This then is Iceland, the land of my boyhood dreams. These are the home-dwellers, who are not city-struck nor crazed with the lust of gold. These are the people of sturdy ways and simple lives whom I am to know in the years to come. ”

“ In the distance Láng Jökull glistens in the brilliant sunshine. Yonder, across the Hvitá, cloud-capped and snowy-mantled Hekla rises grand and lonely above its lava-wasted plain. Around us the numerous springs and fumaroles emit their endless columns of vapor and Strokr moans and groans. The little geyser which we packed with turf two nights ago has been spouting without interruption for two hours. What a contrast! Arctic ice and Plutonic fire battling for supremacy as they have done for ages in this land of strange confusion,—and still the conflict wages. ”

“ No falls, not even the river is visible, they are embedded in the canyon a mile beyond. The crashing roar of the water increased and turning an angle of the cliffs the steeds paused upon the brink of the Hvitá canyon. The full glory of the falls burst upon us radiant in its sheaf of rainbows. Leaving the ponies to graze upon the brink, we descended the crumbling wall to the level of the triangular area within the canyon. This grassy, mist-washed mass of rock is on a level with the top of the lower falls, the real plunge of the Hvitá into the lava abyss. ”

“ Nowhere else in Iceland have I ever felt the least fear of danger, neither in fording the glacial rivers, in the terrible deserts, on the ice mountains, nor in sleeping in the crater of Askja, Bowl, with ice beside my tent and columns of steam and sulfur gases rising from the solfatara in front, but, in this cave the thought was ever present with me,—“those blocks of stone, some of them weighing a ton, each has fallen from that lofty dome, when will the next one fall?” ”

“ The eruption is over, the steam clouds lift and we rush up the dripping slope of geyserite, step over the rim into the hot basin and peer down into these depths whence came those rivers of water. The heat penetrates the thick soles of the riding boots but we walk to the edge of the tube and gaze down into the sizzling throat of the monster. A mass of foam is over the bottom, eighty feet below. It rises, we watch its ascent of the tube with the pace of a fly up a wall. ”

“ The quality of the hospitality in these Icelandic homes is such as to make the stranger feel as if he were at home and it is all done so quietly and without any display. It is simply natural. Every where there is perfect safety, on the long trail, in the village or on the lonely farm. All one has he may leave exposed in the sheds for days without fear of its being disturbed. Honesty is bred in the race. It is refreshing to have no use for locks and to know that one can not lose anything unless he deliberately casts it into a rift. ”

“ Their colors blend perfectly with their surroundings. Of all the curios which we brought back from Iceland nothing reminds us more of our journeys than the long-billed whimbrel which is perched above our bookcases.
The snow-capped peaks of Esja stand out in bold relief, directly in front rises the dome of Skálafell, Hall-Mountain, to the right in the distance, we catch glimpses of the mountain summits at the southern end of Thingvallavatn, Lake-in-the-Valley-of-the-Parliament, which loom higher and higher as we climb the ridge. ”

“ Not so with Iceland. A myriad centuries the Atlantic had rolled its billows against these basalt cliffs, the Arctic packed its ice upon these shores, the beetling mountains cast their rugged outlines upon the quiet fiords, the great Plutonic candles flamed in the Arctic air and guttered the land again and again with scorching streams of molten rock. The seal basked in the sunshine of the lengthened summer, the salmon sported in the glacial streams and millions of birds congregated on the lofty cliffs. All life was blissfully ignorant of its great enemy, man. ”

“ There are songs of the meadow and the sheep-tending, of fishing and of the hay-harvest, of returning spring and dying summer, of the happiness of home-life, of sorrow and joy and love and the whole scale of human emotions. In the midst of their poverty and toil they are a cheerful and happy race, singing at their occupations or writing songs in the saddle or at the sheep-tending. The children are taught to appreciate poetry and to write it and the result is that nearly every one makes verses and out of the many attempts there is much that is excellent. ”

“ After lunch we forded the shallows at the mouth of the nearly land-locked bay of Vogsósar, Whale-Mouth, and descended to the shore over a billowy mass of ropy lava. Numerous tide pools were scattered about and in them were countless eider duck with their young as well as many other species. It is well for these birds and for the people who gain a livelihood from their eggs, down and feathers that the sportsman knows nothing of these breeding places and that the sound of the shotgun never wakes the echoes of these basaltic cliffs. ”

“ Skútustaðir is a scene unmatched in Iceland, the lake, the sloping uplands clothed with excellent grass and sprinkled with a wealth of Arctic flowers, the flocks and herds in the succulent pastures, the farm buildings, Thinghús and church grouped on an eminence between two bodies of water and the grand panorama of meadows, rivers and volcanoes, with their ascending columns and clouds of steam,—a panorama that is well worth a summer and ten thousand miles of travel. ”

“ The lava rises in mammoth blisters with numerous caves that shelter the sheep in the autumn storms. Over all is spread a thin mantle of lichens and within the crevices the Arctic willow and dwarf birch are struggling to reclaim for vegetation this awful wilderness. A wilderness it is, a desolation, a place where witches hung their devil’s cauldrons and brewed their fiendish potions. So intense were their fires that their pots were ruined and when they fled they left the curled and contorted fragments to ensnare the feet of the orthodox traveller. ”

“ No pack trains come and go, no hay-laden ponies wind up from the meadows, no scythe rings with the stone,—the sounds of farm-life are hushed and the peace of the well-kept Sabbath rests upon these homes. Sunday evening calls are made and long ones they are, coffee is served with delicious cakes, the snuff horn circulates freely and in the compound the saddled ponies patiently await the coming of their masters for the wild ride over the moors to their own pastures. ”

“ To one accustomed to seeing the joyous meadows of Iceland in undulating reaches of emerald green sprinkled with brilliant flowers, the tangled heaths of the uplands where roam uncounted sheep and half-wild ponies and the barren slopes of the foot hills of the volcanic ranges, as viewed from any descending trail,—this prospect is extremely pleasing. It must be remembered that there are no real forests in Iceland. ”

“ How out of place it is in Iceland! It is ugly enough when hidden in the brush of a back pasture in New England but when it stands out bare and threatening above the green turf of an Icelandic meadow and supplants the grass-grown walls of ancient days, which add so much to the charm of the landscape, it is incongruous. There are several farms in the neighborhood of Hekla which are mere fragments of their former size and to traverse the sand and lava debris of this section is to realize a little of the terrible havoc the volcano has spread around its base. ”

“ In fording rivers, in crossing the ragged lava, in picking their way over stone-strewn heaths, across quaking bogs, or in the rugged defiles or on the precipitous slopes of the trailless mountains, they are the wisest, kindest, surest and the finest saddle horses.
The endurance of these little steeds is a continual surprise to the stranger. In the bogs and in rubble riding they are extremely cautious and if they are allowed to negotiate the difficult places in their own way, will never bring the rider to grief. ”

“ Standing on the grassy mound the great wall of Almannajgá reaches its black mass from the border of the lake to Armansfell, the Öxerá plunges in one long white curve over the brink, boils musically within its distant canyon and reappears through the rent in the side of the inner wall flecked with foam. Beyond the moorland Súlur, Stone-Pillars, rears his pinnacles of basalt. Thingvallavatn smiles at our feet. No sail dots its brilliant surface, no houses border its precipitous shore. ”

“ On our right rose impassable cliffs and rubble screes and it was along this talus of rolling material, composed of disintegrating lava and sand, that we made our way. There are places where a false step or a small avalanche would sweep horse and rider into the depths of the chasm. When the canyon widened, the green-white of the water flashed up to us like masses of liquid emerald. The trail improved as we descended and the declivity became less precipitous; having a long distance ahead of us we gave the ponies a free bit and away we went in a joyful gallop down the grade. ”

“ On the right rise huge cliffs that have been frost-shattered and at the foot of the narrow ravines that embouche into the plain huge fans of multi-colored rubble are spread above the crumpled rock. From their coverts in the crevices and from within the little caves spring the ptarmigan while the whimbrel’s call is ceaseless from the undulating hillocks. No grass grows here, no sheep scurry before the traveller and not till the Kaldá, Cold-River, is reached is there anything for the ponies to eat. ”

“ As in America, so in Iceland, the boy, who leaves the paternal roof and the occupation of his ancestors, who scorns the opportunities of the farm and seeks his fortune in the metropolis, soon puts aside his home-taught virtues, lapses into ways of idleness, acquires the idea that the world owes him the same living as that won by the ceaseless energy of toil, and it is not long before he becomes a derelict upon the ocean of humanity. ”

“ Here one views a continent in the making, beholds the mighty upheavals from the nether abyss, sees how nature, as if ashamed of her rough work, planes with her league-long blades of ice the basaltic ridges and glassy peaks. The traveller beholds a country full of lakes and rivers, and waterfalls the largest in Europe, but a country without any system of mountain chains and drainage to conform to the laws laid down by the physiographer. Mountains there are in abundance and lofty ones, but scattered hither and yon at the strange caprice of Pluto. ”

“ On our way towards Reykjavik we turned aside for one more gaze at the alluring solfatara, for one more plunge into the viscid sulfur, for one more sniff of its putrid air, then, swinging around the shoulder of the smoking bluffs we wound our tortuous way to the heights above, dismounted and looked down for the last time upon that scene so fair and yet so terrible. Upon the rim of a great crater we held the ponies by the bridle rein and silently absorbed the glories of the panorama. ”

“ They are simply turned loose in the storm as well as in the sunshine, or, into what they dread worse than any storm, among the swarms of savage midges. When the grass is good they are happy; they never knew any other life. What steed of English or American stables would care to become an Icelandic pony, to work all day for the chance to graze all night, and then, as I have so often witnessed, have their master end the days work in a dreary sand waste where willow leaves and scanty sedges offer the only forage? ”

“ The heath over which we took our morning ride is uninviting, dreary and somewhat awe inspiring. There are many beds of flowers in sheltered places. The purple armaria, sandwort and stone-crop are the smiles of Flora upon the face of an Arctic desolation. As one reclines upon the flowered mounds between the tussocks of grass, basking in the genial sunshine and piling the empty tins around him, he forgets for the moment that he is under the cliffs of a mighty sheet of perpetual ice, that he is entirely dependent upon his ponies and the scanty grass they are now so greedily eating. ”

“ From the cradle to the tomb the life of the Icelandic chief fetters our attention by its poetry of will and passion, by its fierce, untamed energy, by its patient endurance, by its undaunted heroism. In Iceland in the tenth century it was only healthy children that were allowed to live. ”

“ I know of no hedgerow in England or country lane in America half so beautiful as many of these approaches to an Icelandic farm house. Hedge clippers, boards and concrete do not make for true beauty. These walls become a portion of the ground, permanent affairs that do not need attention and stand for centuries. The Icelandic farmer can show the New England Yankee how to build a fence, but then he has the material in the toughest of turf. A fence in New England built of native sods would not endure as long as the frail brush fences of our hillside pastures. ”